I’ve never met Janet Hamilton and am not likely to. But we are friends, bound together in the way of oddballs in search of the truth.

She lives on the other side of America and is on a great California Journey, her life,  a job she loved, animals she cared for upended by Covid-19, and three horrific wildfires that forced her to flee three homes, unable to find or afford a new one.

Twenty years ago, she would have been a big news story. Now, she’s just another numbed wanderer in search of safety.

Janet is homeless. She is quixotic and private; she lives and travels with a person known to her readers only as her “partner” and says or reveals nothing about him or her.

She is naturally eloquent. She publishes the most wonderful blog out of an unknown location somewhere in devastated Northern California. Like her, its location is forever changing.

The blog is called As The Road Wanders. It’s a good name. Janet is the road that wanders.

I’ve never known anyone who suffered so much loss, danger, and disappointment and who has responded with her grace of thoughtfulness.

Hers is an almost timeless sense of journey and adventure. That’s why she reminds me of John Steinbeck, who had a special gift for iconic California journeys.

The context of her sudden search for a place to live is tragedy and danger: The coronavirus is never far behind.

It cost her the momentarily peace and stability she felt when she found a job preparing food for the elderly.

She loved that job before the senior center folded due to the virus, and she lost the rest of her life as one savage and terrifying fire after another turned her into an American refugee.

Her life is full of sacrifice and adaptation. Prone to claustrophobia, she has learned how to breathe in tiny trailers and sleep to the din of close by and loud neighbors.

She has lost almost everything that was her own, even a beloved horse. Even the weather has a different meaning for her.

“My idea of good weather has changed since 2017,” she writes of the first fire that ravaged her life. ” Before the Sonoma Napa Valley Tubbs Fire, my favorite time of year was Fall. I still love Fall, but only the tail end of it when the rains come. This morning, the first real storm of the season hit, and it was wonderful—a blessing from the heavens.  The rain poured in sheets of water. I left the dry warmth long enough to walk through the woods near the house; a small doe was foraging down hill. As she turned and crept away to hide a few feet away, I found a private spot in the woods and peed. We have a beautiful bathroom with a spa tub in the house we are staying in, but there is nothing like feeling wild enough to pee in the woods. It’s something men probably don’t think much about, for women, or at least for me, it makes me feel rooted, untamed.”

There is an air of mystery about Janet; she is one of those fiercely individualistic writers who keeps to her own path, no matter what the world says or thinks.

My kind of writer, I guess.

Her writing is full of insight, wry humor, melancholy, and acceptance. She has a wonderful eye for the small detail that paints a big picture.

California is perhaps America’s most poignant argument for taking climate change seriously.  I know of no one who has captured that very human story more skillfully than Janet.

I first encountered Janet when she joined my online Creative Group, a gathering of creatives I hoped would become a new kind of creative and supportive digital community.

I have few friends, but most of the ones I have are like-minded oddballs, always somehow outside of the tent, fascinated by the circus inside, but never quite a part of it.

Being humans, the effort to form a creative group failed in a poisonous cloud of cliques, manifestos, accusations,  factions, and conflict. I contributed to much of it, having greatly underestimated the challenges of making community in America.

But I did keep some wonderful friends.

There were lots of talented people in the group. Janet was one of the shining lights, popping up on and off, writing beautiful things, then vanishing without explanation.

I knew she would come back, and she always did. She is a writer from head to toe. She has no choice.

Janet’s writing always stood out in terms of emotion, detail, and some wisdom. She has lived a lot of life.

Curiously, her life seems to get richer as it gets harder.

She has lived in motels, tents, friends back yards,  borrowed living rooms,  trailers, and has again decided to return to writing on a blog. She writes like  Steinbeck in that she shares his sense of time and place.

Her California journey is a metaphor for troubled and crippled America in 2020.

She’s still looking for a new home and life, perhaps with her mysterious partner. I can’t wait to see where she ends up; I hope she doesn’t vanish too many more times until she lands.

There is a lot for all of us in Janet’s writing.

For a few centuries, we – living in America – were arrogantly great. We are humbled now. We are learning that we were not so great after all, but maybe still can be.

We each have to figure out this new reality.

At the moment, we are stunned, hateful, in shock, and confused. Janet’s blog is a work of literature for our time, really for any time. The blog is called As The Road Wanders, and you can find it here.

Janet lives in the tradition of brilliant but unhinged writers over time. Sensing her unyielding individuality and courage, I sent her a biography of Henry David Thoreau. Those two would have gotten each other right away. After that, we were just friends.

Like any good writer, Janet has spent much of her life trying to find out who she is. Like most good writers, she will probably never quite know. But it will be a hell of a trip.

Every few months, I get a message informing me she is giving up writing for now or abandoning social media, or experiencing a new revelation about her life. Then in a few months, in a new place, she is back, beautifully and movingly chronicling this new kind of America pilgrimage.

From my other reading, I suspect many more Americans are on this trip than we realize. I doubt that too many can write about it as well. It seems like Janet is heading to San Diego. Godspeed.

I think she has captured the uncertainty and angst of life in the new America better than anyone I know of. Anyone of us, after all, could be her.

Very few of us could capture the experience in this way.

Photo by Janet Hamilton.